CHINESE THWART TIMBER SAFEGUARDS

While the U.S. is clearly part of the problem in Africa, China is at least as much of a worry.

For example, in 2013, the European Union introduced the E.U. Timber Regulation. It requires ‘due diligence’ from importers to verify that timber being brought into E.U. markets isn’t illegally harvested.

This slowed timber exports from the Congo Basin to the E.U., but China was quick to jump in and exploit the void instead.

And the Chinese worry little about whether timber is illegally harvested or obtained via bribery, according to a wide range of sources.

When Gabon banned log exports in 2010 to encourage local wood-processing while stymieing illegal logging, China responded by quickly leaping into nearby Cameroon.

Just as bad, Chinese loggers want only round logs (raw timber), providing almost no opportunity for value-adding or local employment (via sawmilling or woodworking) by timber-producing countries.

This ensures that China maximizes its profits while local countries stay poor.

INSATIABLE CONSUMERISM

China is the biggest force behind a growing illegal trade that is stripping the native forests of many countries. Many developed nations – such as the U.S., Australia, and E.U. – are now enacting laws to ban illegal timber imports.

But those laws do little to influence China’s aggressive behavior, or taming the dark side of the global timber trade.

Malaysia and Indonesia are massive producers of palm oil, much of which is exported overseas.

Oil palm is not only the biggest direct driver of deforestation and peat-swamp destruction in these nations but is a growing forest-killer elsewhere in the tropics -- often in mega-diversity areas such as New Guinea, Equatorial Africa, and Latin America.

Native forests and peat swamps in the tropics have remarkable biodiversity and are massive stores of carbon – the destruction of which spews out billions of tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions each year.

And this is despite clear evidence that oil palm is one of the worst feed-stocks for producing biodiesel because of the exceptionally high environmental costs -- to biodiversity and our climate -- as well as to local landowners displaced by the big plantation companies.

Jeremy Hance, a leading environmental journalist, tells us about evidence of rampant illegal logging in Vietnam -- and what needs to happen to combat it.

On Thursday, the European Union and Vietnamese officials signed a forest-law agreement (known as a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade pact) that would theoretically ensure that all the wood exported from Vietnam to the E.U. has been legally felled.

But the E.U. must be intensely vigilant going forward -- and should walk away if Vietnam doesn’t quickly address its illegal logging epidemic.

Scary Report

The reason for caution is a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency, which finds that Vietnamese companies have been shelling out millions in bribes for logs cut from national parks and community areas in Cambodia.

The EIA's report on Vietnam is highlighted in this hard-hitting video.

Over just five months, the EIA tracked 300,000 cubic meters of wood illegally cut in Cambodia and then smuggled into Vietnam. This is despite the fact that Cambodia currently has a log-export ban in place and has halted legal timber shipments to Vietnam -- for this very reason.

But Vietnamese officials have undermined Cambodia’s efforts, by issuing quotas that turn this illegally cut and laundered wood into ‘legal’ timber, according to the EIA.

And this illegal-legal timber could find it’s way into the E.U. and other markets -- such as the U.S. and Australia, which have checks on importing illegally logged wood –- if these countries aren’t prepared to staunch the illegal flow.

What's Happening?

Why isn’t Vietnam stopping this? One word: Money.

Vietnam currently has the world’s sixth largest export trade in wood –- worth over $7 billion last year –- yet as of last year the country has outlawed domestic logging in its natural forests.

To feed its industry, Vietnam has been plundering its neighbor’s forests for years.

But these latest revelations from EIA shows just how far Vietnam is from controlling its wood sources or respecting the laws of its neighbors. The EIA reports details a vast system of bribes to get Vietnamese officials and security personnel to look the other way.

Illegal logging is devastating some of Cambodia’s last great wildernesses. Conservationists have recently proven that Virachey National Park in Cambodia still harbors many threatened species, including Asian elephants, sun bear, Asian black bear, clouded leopard, golden cat, and Sunda pangolin.

But Virachey Park is just one of the targets for illegal loggers. And the loggers are also notorious poachers -- snaring widely and killing wildlife indiscriminantly.

People are Hurting Too

Illegal logging hurts people too. It has been linked to the murders of activists, journalists, forest rangers, and local people. Local people are dying trying to save their trees.

Vietnam isn’t alone in this dilemma. Illegal logging is a global problem, especially acute in developing tropical nations. It is exacerbating climate change and biodiversity loss, driving conflicts with traditional land owners, and funneling money into a variety of other criminal enterprises such as the illegal drug trade and human trafficking.

At the end of its report, the EIA offers helpful recommendations, including strengthening the agreement between the E.U. and Vietnam when it comes to imported timber.

If the E.U. can’t persuade Vietnam to change its ways, then it should cancel the agreement and stop importing Vietnamese timber and wood products altogether.

But given how many times Vietnam has failed to stop illegal logging, individual consumers and advocacy groups may want to take a more immediate stand: Don’t buy any wood products from Vietnam until they really change their errant and predatory ways.

The analysis focused on six of the most important tropical nations -- Bolivia, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea -- as well as Argentina and Paraguay. These countries produce a big chunk of the four internationally traded commodities (beef, soy, palm oil, timber) that were the focus of the study.

The study found that about a third of all deforestation could be directly attributed to those four export commodities. And if one includes beef production in the Amazon, which is mostly 'exported' to the major population centers in southern Brazil, then exports of the four commodities account for a whopping 57% of all deforestation.

In all of the studied countries except for Bolivia and Brazil, export markets were the dominant drivers of deforestation. Moreover, for most of the eight countries, the importance of export markets as a driver of deforestation and greenhouse-gas emissions increased over time.

What this says is that much of tropical deforestation is being driven not by the needs of local people, but by growing global demand. The E.U. and China are big sinners, but there's plenty of blame to spread around among other nations.

A lot of the food and timber we consume comes from tropical nations. We all want to live well, but there is no free lunch. Somewhere, a chainsaw is roaring and a bulldozer growling so that we can have cheap food and timber.